Remember the Starfighter (45 page)

During the time he had known her, Arendi had occasionally touched on her past.

“I am a machine,” she had said days ago in the formal briefing. “Modified and redeveloped over the era. Made to suit the parameters.”

It was a strange way to put it. To say you were a drone, when it was clear you were something more.

Julian saw it every time when she was in view. He had become accustomed to it: the shy smile, the way she seemed to breathe, the natural pauses in her speech. He didn’t know all the specifics, but Arendi had some form of sentience. A self-awareness indistinguishable from other humans; the personality was unique.

So Julian was not prepared when he came face-to-face to the figure before them. It was another android, albeit one partially damaged and disfigured. Yet it had the same face as hers. That of Arendi, the resemblance distorted, but stark.

“Greetings Captain Nverson,” the woman said in a courteous nod.

The android was on the other end of the landing bridge, standing calmly, but with the fringes of her face torn apart.

Despite her noticeable injuries, the artificial woman graciously bowed as they arrived to meet her, not showing an ounce of pain. “We are here to serve,” she added, before raising her scar laden face.

Her voice was hoarse, and distinctly computerized. As if the synthetic processes generating the words were obstructed or impaired in some way. Julian could see that the woman was literally half-smiling, the pieces of skin sagging from the end of her lower jaw.

Although the wounds amounted to open flesh around her left eye, and a missing nose, there was no blood or bodily tissue. There were only layers of artificial fibers, glowing in muscles of silk, and flexing with each movement of the face.

Julian examined the woman, noticing the tarnished similarities to Arendi — the shape of the eyes, cheeks and lips all the same, exact carbon copies. He wondered if she had suffered some kind of beating, the locks of her hair torn out, the remaining strands left to messily fall down to her shoulder.

He turned to Arendi, stunned.

“This is Miya,” she explained. “... she is my sister.”

Julian noted the hesitation in Arendi’s voice. She sounded awkward and nervous confirming the obvious connection.

The artificial twin was dressed in a plain beige uniform. However, even her clothes had suffered as well, the sleeves ripped and barely attached to the shoulders. He looked down at her chest and arms, and saw the signs of more ruptured skin.

“Please,” her so-called sister said assuredly, giving another formal bow. “Servetus awaits.”

Julian walked slowly, still disturbed. Perhaps the wear and tear of time had taken a toll on the vessel, he thought. As it had been explained before, the S.S.F. Elion had barely survived its transit into the enemy gateway. Since then, the ancient ship had few resources to pull from, with no other aid, until now.

They exited the landing bridge and entered into a main hallway of the vessel. He heard the screeching turn of the gyros raise the ship’s gate, both the hull inside and out crumpled and still littered with burn damage.

In a rush of movement, the other machines came, the clicking sounds a loud clatter in the narrow passageway. Shaped like spiders, the tiny drones scampered about, unaffected by the gravity, and clung to the sides of the surrounding bulkhead. There must have been a small colony of them, the many present tapping their legs and observing Julian with his each step. One drone, in particular, cut a path over the faded words on the bulkhead wall. “EARTHFORCE” the letters said. “THE SPACE SCIENCE FOUNDATION.”

Looking at all the drones meander about, Julian couldn’t help but comment. “Your little friends, I presume,” he said, nearly overwhelmed.

Arendi didn’t even smile, her lips abstaining from the expression. She merely walked on, her face vacant of any reaction.

Except for the drones’ movements, there was a near silence inside the ship. He glanced at Arendi and then her sister, and found that they were walking almost in synch. For two siblings who had not seen each other in years, they were oddly distant. In fact, there was no discussion between them. At least not verbally.

Along with the other robots, there was another drone lying in wait. It stood outside the metal gated door, the machine’s body built like a tank. It was a construction droid of some sort, its exterior painted in yellow and black stripes. Designed for lifting cargo, it had been built with hydraulic legs and a pair of arms shaped like pincers.

Arendi finally showed some sign of life. “Control,” she said, looking almost surprised, but fondly at the bulky machine.

The drone did not reply. It simply bobbed its box-like head back and forth in a scan.

The door behind the construction droid then slid open, the label over the gate reading the words “CENTRAL MAINFRAME.” 

Julian stepped through the dimly lit premises, as the collection of machines followed along. They all quickly gathered together, forming two columns at the side of the room. Arendi joined them, walking off with her sister to the tail end, where she stood still and silent.

Julian then looked toward the center of the room, and saw the giant tubed chamber surrounded in darkness. Behind it were the towers of hardware, the system racks housing what Julian guessed to be an artificial intelligence.

This was Arendi’s maker, the advanced computer installed near the energy source.  Like her, it had tapped into the power of the enemy, but on a level far beyond any hand-sized containment pod. The central pillar inside was covered in the same twilight. That of the Endervar energy, cultivated and controlled by the Elion’s own resident A.I.

Julian walked up to the central pillar, and recognized it to be a fusion reactor, retrofitted to hold a matter of a different element. What it contained swelled in tumors of ink, bulging and shaking, as if ready to explode.

GREETINGS. I AM SERVETUS.

The onboard computer spoke as a male, but in a slowed and halting tone. Julian raised his head, and imagined that the fusion chamber itself was perhaps the brain of the A.I., watching him, and eager to speak.

ARENDI HAS ALREADY TOLD ME MUCH ABOUT YOU.

In just a minute’s time, Arendi had fed the data. The personal memories, the journey, and all the acquired knowledge uploaded to her creator. In response, the ancient A.I. had already begun calculating, and preparing the simulations, wanting to devise the appropriate course of actions. But in spite of the machine’s devotion to logic, even it had a protocol designed to convey relief.

WE WILL ASSIST YOU IN EVERY WAY POSSIBLE. IT IS OUR DUTY TO HUMANITY. WE HAVE WAITED FOR THIS MOMENT FOR OVER 10,000 YEARS.

Behind the fusion reactor, the racks of hardware had all activated, the computing power of the A.I. in full force. Julian stood by as the enemy energies gyrated inside the containment chamber.

“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said to the age-old machine. “But I guess it’s better late than never.”

It was improbable. The calculations putting the odds at over ten million-to-one. It should have never came to be.

And yet, still it happened. The rest ancient history.

The S.S.F. Elion had almost been incinerated during that moment of initial emergence. This is what befell the rest of the science fleet, destroyed in a storm of energies that had wiped out six other ships, along with a contingent of armed mobile escorts. In a single second, the military craft surrounding the enemy gateway had been entirely obliterated. Blasting across the captive sky, the alien force had cemented its presence, emanating a shockwave over the sea.

Three days before, the Elion and the other science craft had arrived to area, while the Endervar shield was nearing completion. Already, they had been studying the rising barrier and were looking for any weakness that could be exploited. Nuclear and fusion bombs had been used to some effect, but still the shield was growing, at a rate that could not be stopped, only partially slowed.

Drawing the military’s attention, however, was the other force emerging on the planet. It appeared over the eastern part of the Pacific Ocean, where the Endervar shield had first formed. Below it were the signs of the anomaly, the mysterious energies tentacling upward in rays of dispersed light.

The scientific task force had assembled in the area, scanning the nascent power and analyzing the results. It was assumed to be the arrival point of the invaders, the path from which they would spring forth. But in the case of the Elion, it would also be the center of its new existence — near the heart of the enemy energy, picking at its secrets.

As the fully-formed gateway destroyed its sister ships, the Elion had been pulled in. It did so, not out of choice, but as a consequence of the warping energies surrounding the new reality taking hold. Perhaps due to its position in that very moment, the science vessel had been sucked in, past the cycling matter and into a pocket of empty, but distorted space.

It had barely survived the experience. A third of the vessel had been destroyed, the majority of the human crew killed from the explosion and the surrounding fires. But although wounded, the ship still functioned, pulled to the near center of the anomaly, to an area where the gravity was strong.

Its only companion had been the S.S.F. Njoya, a sister ship that had been crushed into pieces, and then thrown into the void.

THE HUMAN CREW DIED LONG AGO. BUT WE REMAIN, CONTINUING ON WITH THE MISSION.

Servetus, the Elion’s assistive A.I. had been there throughout it all. In the thousands of years that had passed, the supercomputer had been the one to study the Endervar gateway and the matter that percolated throughout the anomaly. Eventually, it had devised a careful strategy, sending off Arendi into a ship built from both scraps of human technology and that of the enemy.

It had done this alone, the interference from the anomaly’s energies disrupting the ship’s communications with its superiors on Earth.

“Your plan worked,” Julian said, gazing at his surroundings and at the large fusion tube rising above him. “I know it was a great risk. But it seems that the enemy is still unaware of your presence.”

YES. WE HAVE DETECTED NO CHANGE. YOUR ARRIVAL SEEMS TO HAVE ALSO LED TO NO CHANGE AS WELL.

“Well, we’ve had our fair share of problems getting here.” 

He glanced over his shoulder, and found Arendi, still quiet and remote. For some reason, she was staring down at the floor, the entire platoon of drones all at a mysterious halt. Together, they were absolutely motionless, like a group of attendants, subservient to the master in their midst.

“We need your help,” Julian said, returning to the A.I. “Is it true? Can you really lift the Endervar shield?”

It was the same question that had occupied the minds of what had been the crew of the Elion. The invaders and their alien barrier — the one problem that even Earth’s best scientists had failed to solve. Since then, it had become the sole reason for the ancient computer’s existence.

Once, ages ago, the captain of the Elion had made a similar request.
Study the shield. Find a way. That’s the priority.
The dying words of a professor, perhaps realizing the rare chance they had been given. To perhaps undo what had likely plagued an entire galaxy. In the end, there was an answer, one that would have most pleased its former commander.

YES. IT CAN BE DONE.

To Julian’s side, the large screen installed on the bulkhead wall turned on. Out of use since the death of its captain, the screen was barely functional, a large crack in the glass, with the colors displayed diluted into a pinkish white. What appeared were schematics, the data at first a blur to Julian. But as the slides went on, Julian saw the designs in full view, the computerized drawings showing what appeared to be ships, weapons, and even body armor, the suit fitted for a human.

THESE ARE ALL THEORETICAL CONCEPTS, BUT WE CALCULATE THAT ANY OF THESE TECHNOLOGIES CAN BE USED TO NEGATE THE SHIELD AND FIGHT THE INVADERS.

Given that the Elion was a derelict ship with few resources, none of it had been actually built. However, that would start to change today.

“Our vessel, the Au-O’sanah, it has the fabrication technologies you need,” Julian said. “We’ll start unloading them.”

GOOD. WE WILL BEGIN WORK IMMEDIATELY.

The surrounding drones had been reactivated, the mechanical spiders fanning out toward the open door and back to the landing bridge. Her sister Miya trailed behind, but so did Arendi, leaving without saying a word back to Julian.

He was unnerved by the cold reaction. But before Julian could join her, he still had one other crucial question to ask.

“When we arrived, something happened. My comrade, she’s comatose,” he said, speaking to the machine. “We think it must be related to the shield.”

YES. I AM AWARE. INDEED, IT IS A CONSEQUENCE OF THE SHIELD. WE HAVE COME TO THEORIZE THAT PERHAPS ALL HUMANS ON EARTH HAVE BEEN AFFECTED TO VARYING DEGREES.

A door at the other end of the room automatically opened. A trail of lights in the floor flashed on.

PLEASE CAPTAIN. WE HAVE PREPARED ALL THE INFORMATION YOU NEED.